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and for the life of the survivor. See Estate of Vitt v. United
States, 706 F.2d at 875.15
Finally, petitioner relies on United States v. Herring, 240
F.2d 225 (4th Cir. 1957), and United States v. Bowcut, 287 F.2d
654 (9th Cir. 1961). These cases, like the case now before us,
concerned the estate tax and the income tax, and in both cases
the taxes were not imposed on a single taxable event. In both
cases, however, the single-transaction requirement was found to
be satisfied, and equitable recoupment was applied in the
taxpayer's favor.
In United States v. Herring, supra, the decedent died in
1948, and his surviving spouse, as administratrix, filed the
estate tax return in 1949, paying the tax due. In 1951, the
Government issued a preliminary notice proposing a deficiency in
15Although arguably there were two taxable events in Estate
of Vitt v. United States, supra,-- the death of Edward Vitt and
the death of Verlena Vitt, see Parker v. United States, 110 F.3d
678, 684 (9th Cir. 1997) (finding that death is a taxable event),
see infra p. 46--the Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit
considered the single transaction requirement met by the
precipitating transaction, the lifetime transfer of the property
to the Vitts’ descendants. Similarly, in the instant case,
arguably there were two transactions or taxable events--the
transfer of the stock to petitioner upon decedent's death and the
subsequent sale by petitioner of that stock--the precipitating
transaction, however, was the valuation of the same item in the
transfer from decedent to petitioner. We note that the Supreme
Court in Bull v. United States, 295 U.S. 247 (1935), also did not
consider the death of Bull and the transfer of the overvalued
partnership interest to the estate; instead it viewed the
precipitating transaction--the distribution of the partnership
income--as the single transaction.
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